


Cynosure

by basilophage



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Awkward Boners, Awkward Romance, Awkward Sexual Situations, Bisexual Male Character, Camping, Dorks in Love, Dunmer - Freeform, Eventual Smut, F/M, Femdom, Huddling For Warmth, Love Potion/Spell, Mildly Dubious Consent, POV First Person, Pansexual Character, Potions Accident, Road Trips, Work In Progress, also i'm tagging this as, and while this fic isn't dark, anyway, basically bc all of the marriage options in skyrim are playersexual, because love potions are kind of horrifying, everybody's bi y'all, except lydia who is a lesbian, happy valentines day, here's a sprawling romance featuring an unpopular character from a 10 year old game, i'm choosing to interpret that as meaning most of tamriel is culturally pan/bisexual, it does explore issues of boundaries and consent, literally no one asked for this, no beta we die like men, that said there's some background lydia/ysolda
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2019-10-30 05:13:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17822564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basilophage/pseuds/basilophage
Summary: cy·no·surenouna person or thing that is the center of attention or admiration.Some people say the magical arts cause as many problem as they solve. A dedicated alchemist, Sondryn Hleran was never tempted to agree with them until now. When the snarky wizard she's infatuated with tests out a friend's love potion and falls in love with her, she agrees to help cure him. The problem? The ingredients for the antidote are rare, and only the College of Winterhold knows where to find them. The same College of Winterhold that she can't get into because she isn't a mage. Now Sondryn and Farengar find themselves travelling across Skyrim in a race against time. They have until the 30th of Rain's Hand to brew the antidote, or there's no telling what the consequences might be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> happy heart's day, y'all

Something was wrong with Farengar. 

On the 16th of Sun’s Dawn, he ventured out of Dragonsreach and into the Bannered Mare. Clean shaven and, by Lydia’s account, without a sword held to his throat. 

Admittedly, I didn’t pay this any mind at first. I didn’t even bother looking up from the chest of alchemical ingredients I was sorting through. Heart’s Day was popular in Skyrim, to say the least. A holiday devoted to drinking, fucking, and singing bawdy songs in a crowded tavern was bound to be popular anywhere, but it was especially beloved by Nords. And under his scholar’s robes, advanced vocabulary, and bookish nature, wasn’t Farengar still a Nord? 

“Forgive me, Lydia, but I don’t see what the big deal is. Don't Nords like to go to inns and get shitfaced on Heart’s Day?” I asked. I pretended not to notice Lydia’s huff of annoyance.

“Not if that Nord is Farengar,” she said from over my shoulder. “In the ten years he’s been here, I’ve seen him in the Bannered Mare _maybe_ twice. I’m telling you, it was weird.” She shifted her weight and looked at me pointedly. 

I clicked my tongue, probably trying a little too hard to look flippant. “Well, they say that venturing outside one’s comfort zone is a sign of growth,” I replied, scooping a handful of chaurus eggs into a knapsack. “Personally, I think it’s wonderful that he’s getting out more.” 

Lydia, however, had already seen through my feigned nonchalance and was equipped with the stubborn disposition her people were famous for. She wasn’t going to concede that easily.

“Sondryn,” she said firmly, crossing her arms and drawing up to her full height. 

_‘Noble effort, Lydia,’_ I thought, _‘but I can be stubborn too.’_ I made a show of holding one of the chaurus eggs up to the light and examining it.

“Remember back when you used to call me ‘Thane?’ Or ‘my liege?’ Or even just ‘ma’am?’ Azura, do I miss that.” I tossed her the egg. “Those were the days, huh?”

She caught it, without so much as a glance away from me, and said drily, “Dragonborn Sondryn Hleran, my honored liege, Thane of Whiterun, and destined savior of Tamriel, your lowly servant humbly begs that you take but an hour out of your very busy day of reading and gossiping to go check on your damn _boyfriend._ ”

Nearly every other day, I was grateful the comfortable back-and-forth of mine and Lydia’s banter. And any other day, I would have been tripping all over myself to find out why the most reclusive man in Whiterun was suddenly hanging out in taverns. But on this particular day, not so much. Things had been awkward between Farengar and I recently. Actually, that was a lie. The awkwardness, and its cause, were entirely one-sided on my part. The truth was, I had developed feelings for him over the past year or so. While Lydia, Arcadia, and probably the rest of Whiterun had picked up on it almost immediately, Farengar was either still in the dark or feigning ignorance. I was still licking my wounds after my last bungled attempt at seducing him. Putting on an amulet of Dibella and reading quietly in his study so as not to interrupt his research didn’t drive him as mad with lust as I had hoped. When I finally did work up the nerve to ask him to dinner, he just stared at me for a few awkward seconds before replying that I was welcome to have dinner in his study if I was hungry. I almost would have preferred it if he had laughed in my face.

I turned my attention back to Lydia and lightly whacked one of her pauldrons.

“First of all, don’t call him my boyfriend, you bully. I never tease you about Ysolda,” I said. 

“You constantly tease me about Ysolda.”

I ignored her and pressed on, “Secondly, what makes you think I even have any interest in butting into his personal affairs anyway?”

“You’re an infamous busybody with a huge crush on him. I’m amazed you’re not over there already.”

“That’s...that’s fair, actually,” I conceded. “But I’m pretty sure I’ve already figured this one out and my intervention won’t be necessary.” I grimaced. “Or welcome, for that matter.”

“Oh yeah? Then what do you think is going on?” Her smirk was absolutely insufferable.

“Isn’t it obvious? After ten long, lonely years, Farengar must’ve gotten tired of his hand so he went out on the most romantic day of the year to look for a suitable replacement. There you go. Mystery solved.”

Lydia’s smirk turned into a full-blown grin and she started giggling. I felt my shoulders loosen a bit as she broke into full blown laughter. Surely now she would drop the subject of me investigating and just tell me if Farengar looked as good without his sideburns as I said he would.

“ _Pfffft!_ Is-is that your theory? Farengar is horny and looking to get laid?” she managed between bursts of laughter.

“I mean, what else could it be?” I kept my tone nonchalant. In reality, it was killing my pride to think that Farengar went out for a one night stand with some random barfly right after I’d just made an idiot out of myself trying to ask him out.

“Oh by the Nine, I hope you’re right,” she said, practically wheezing, “Because I never got to tell you the weirdest part about Heart’s Day.”

“Which was?” I prompted. 

“The first thing he did when he got inside was walk up to me and ask if you were going to show up.” 

She laughed again, so hard I swore I saw dust coming loose from the rafters. It really was no wonder Nords were the first mortals to master the Voice. 

I, on the other hand, was less amused. Admittedly, I could see the humor in the scenario of Whiterun’s reclusive court wizard trying to pick me up in The Bannered Mare. But I had plenty of reasons to believe that Farengar Secret-Fire did not have a burning desire to fuck me, and that took this entire situation from mundanely amusing to outright suspicious in an instant. 

“I’m going to go to Arcadia’s to sell some things, then I’ll look in on what’s happening with Farengar.” I whacked Lydia with my knapsack before I pulled it over my shoulder. “Watch the house while I’m gone and try not laugh yourself to death, you absolute horker.”


	2. Chapter 2

Normally on cold days like this one, half of the women of Whiterun could be found sitting around the hearth of Arcadia's Cauldron. In the two decades since the shop opened, it had become a tradition of sorts, to spend cold afternoons chatting at the potion store. So when I opened the door, I was surprised to see the shop completely empty except for Arcadia. She stood behind the counter, intently picking at a crack in the wood, her brow furrowed, and her teeth digging into her lower lip. 

“Sondryn, welcome. So good to see you.” She sounded every bit as nervous as she looked. 

“You too. Is, uh, something wrong, Arcadia?” I asked, slowly lowering my bag of chaurus eggs onto the counter. 

She shifted awkwardly and began, “I...I almost don’t want to say anything, but I’m worried things may have gotten out of hand and I’m afraid I need your help.”

I nodded silently, waiting for her to continue. _‘Here we go.’_ I thought. She was going to ask me to go into some gods forsaken old mine to retrieve some sort of something that somebody somehow lost down there.

“Have you seen or heard anything odd about Farengar recently?” she asked. 

I blinked, caught off guard by the question.

“Uh, I haven’t seen him in a couple days,” I replied, slowly unpacking the chaurus eggs. “But Lydia mentioned that he had finally shaved off those horrid mutton chops and visited the Bannered Mare on Hearts’ Day. That seems...uncharacteristically sociable of him.” I was beginning to get an idea of where this was going, and I didn’t like it one bit. 

Arcadia carefully avoided eye contact and cleared her throat.“Well, I believe...I believe I’m at fault for that.” 

With that, the puzzle pieces clicked into place in my head. For the first time, I desperately wished someone was asking me to go fetch a shitty family heirloom from a shitty cave.

“Arcadia, you didn’t,” I whispered. While she had always joked about testing out dangerous and experimental potions on Farengar, I couldn’t fathom that she’d ever do such a thing to one of her closest friends. I took a step back from the counter.

She held up a hand. “Now, wait. Before you go thinking that I’ve been slipping untested love potions into your boyfriend’s drinks-”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I interjected. 

“Of course. Before you go thinking that I’ve been slipping untested love potions into _Farengar’s_ drinks all willy-nilly,” she corrected. “I’ll have you know, he volunteered.” 

“Why?” 

Arcadia ignored me and began pacing behind the counter.

“It’s just that I -well, _we_ \- didn’t think the potion would work so well. I mean, for Mara’s sake, the recipe was from my grandmother’s old copy of _A Girl’s Guide to Glamors_! Everybody knows that book is a load of bunk.” 

"Arcadia?"

“Oh, I should have known the Draught of Devotion was legitimate though,” she said, now clearly rambling more to herself than to me. “The complex methodology, the obscure ingredients...has to be brewed and administered on the 16th of Sun’s Dawn, requires a taglock from the intended cynosure, the nectar of a lily taken from a shrine to Dibella...that’s just far too complicated to be fake…”

“Arcadia?”

“Yes, sorry?” She stopped pacing. “What is it?”

I reached over the counter and put a hand on her shoulder, to steady myself as much as her. I breathed in slowly.

“There’s an imbiber, who’s obviously Farengar, and a cynosure, a focal point for the imbiber’s affection.” I knew damn well the answer to the question I was about to ask, but couldn’t stop myself. “Who’s the cynosure, Arcadia?” 

She grimaced and began picking at the crack in the counter again.

“Well…” 

“Arcadia,” I said. “I promise I won’t be mad. Who’s the cynosure?”

She stopped picking at the counter and gave me a guilty look. “I’m afraid it’s you, Sondryn,” she finally answered. 

I sighed. Of course it was me. It always was.

 ===

We sat next to each other, staring blankly into the fireplace over mugs of warmed mead.

“And you’re completely certain?” I asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Arcadia nodding grimly.

“I am. I’ve been corresponding with a young Breton alchemist in Markarth who says the potion’s effects are indefinite.” She nodded to a stack of papers on the table. “So far none of my antidotes have had any effect, but Muiri believes that the potion can be counteracted by an antidote made through a similar methodology. It seems our best bet is a potion called Abelle’s Philter of Nullification. Muiri’s instructions say it should be brewed and imbibed on the 30th of Rain’s Hand. If we tried to do it any earlier, it likely wouldn’t work.” 

I nodded. So Farengar was, at minimum, going to be in love with me for a month and a half.

“What if something goes wrong? Is there a backup plan?” I asked.

“I'm afraid not. Theoretically, we could wait until the next 30th of Rain’s Hand and try again. But who knows what state he’d be in by that time.”

“Well, we’ll just have to get it right the first time.” My empty mug clacked against the table as I set it down. “So, we know how and when to make the antidote, but what should I do in the short term? I’d planned on visiting Farengar to make sure he was all right, but now I fear it may not be the best idea. He won’t go-” I waved my arms like a frost troll, “-if he sees me, right?” 

Arcadia let out a huff of laughter. “By Kynareth, no. I’ve been taking notes on his behavior since he agreed to be my subject. I’m glad to report that he’s still himself. Same old Farengar as before. The only difference is that he’s in love with you now.”

"Hm." I stared down at my fingernails. She put a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“It might actually do him some good, you know? He’s been wanting to see you, but is too nervous to come visit you at Breezehome. And-” Arcadia cut herself off mid-sentence, suddenly very tense.

“And?” I prompted.

“And...there’s a good chance that you’ll have to go with him to gather the materials for the antidote.” 

I buried my head in my hands.

“Of course there is. Mind if I ask why?” I said into my hands. 

Arcadia stroked my hair.

“There, there,” she cooed. “While the College might be able to point you in the right direction, these components are rare enough that I doubt they’ll just have them lying around. You’ll likely have to search in treacherous places, and while he’s certainly an accomplished wizard, Farengar is no adventurer.”

“Then why not send Lydia with him? Or one of the Companions? Why me?” My head remained firmly in my hands.

“Do you honestly think either Lydia or Farengar -or gods forbid, _Farkas_ \- would have the alchemical knowledge necessary to correctly identify an ingredient that’s scarcely been seen in Skyrim for 20 years?” she said. “Besides, being someone who values his privacy as much as Farengar does, I doubt he’d let anyone else in on what’s happening.”

She had a point. Even if by some miracle Lydia and Farengar made it to their destination without killing each other or getting incinerated by dragons, neither of them would be able to recognize something as obscure as a sacred lotus. Much less know how to extract its seeds. Moreover, if I were Farengar, I think I’d let myself be torn apart by hagravens before I told Lydia that I drank a potion that made me fall in love with her boss.

“Alright, I’ll just go alone then,” I said with a sigh. 

“Sondryn, you’re a gifted alchemist, and a talented enchanter, but the College…” Arcadia’s chair squealed as she shifted uncomfortably beside me.

“But the College won’t even let me into their courtyard until I can play at their puerile magical pissing contest." I groaned. I was cornered and I knew it. "And the only person we know who’s in good enough standing to get me in and get access to the resources we need is Farengar. Fuck.”

She leaned forward to refill my mug.

“Forgive me if I’ve misunderstood something, or if I’m sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong, but why are you so upset at the idea of travelling with Farengar?” she asked, her expression soft with concern. “You’re attracted to him, right? Sure, the circumstances aren’t ideal, but I thought you’d be excited to get to spend more time with him.” 

Why was I so opposed to it? Was I embarrassed? To tell the truth, I was. Immensely so. But this went deeper than that. This wasn’t girlish nervousness, this was outright dread. The entire situation made me feel unsettled. I pondered it for a long time before I answered.

“Bear with me, but this is the only way I can think to explain it,” I began, rotating the mug in my hands. “A long time ago, while I was taking a carriage through the Pale, I had to sit next to this horrible old pewtersmith who was teasing his dog with a bit of dried meat. She was a good dog. She followed his every command and she begged and wagged her tail and made whines that broke my heart. But the old miser just kept teasing her, no matter what she did. Eventually he got bored with his cruel little game and dropped it. But when the poor dog finally got her prize, she realized that it wasn’t meat at all. It was just an old piece of leather. She couldn’t actually eat it.”

I looked up from my mug and continued, “Does that make any sense? I’ve wanted Farengar’s affection for a long time, but this isn’t actually it. It looks the same, from a certain distance, but under scrutiny, it’s just an imitation of what I want. I know I haven’t always been subtle about my feelings for him in the past, but just the idea of making a move on Farengar while he’s under the effects of a potion is...it makes me sick to my stomach. I would never take advantage of him, but it hurts to imagine him offering me affection I can’t reciprocate, you know?” 

Arcadia was quiet for a while, then she leaned over and tenderly squeezed my hand.

“I really am sorry, Sondryn. We thought it might have some effect, or else I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of brewing it, but we never imagined it would be like this. I thought at most he’d be a little starry-eyed for a day or two, maybe bring you flowers if he was feeling bold. We- or rather, _I_ \- should have been more careful. I’m sorry,” she said softly.

I leaned back in my chair, letting my head fall back. It couldn’t be helped.

“One alchemist to another, you can’t dwell on every experiment that goes wrong.” I downed the rest of my mead. “Or right, as it were in this case. I have to ask though, why did you choose me? Please tell me I’m not so pathetic that you felt you had to step in to help me.”

“Goodness, no,” she replied. ”It was convenience, mostly. Farengar agreed to be my test subject on three conditions: his cynosure couldn’t be someone who lived at Dragonsreach, they couldn’t be someone who was already married or otherwise involved, and they couldn’t be someone who would be upset to be on the receiving end of his attentions, like poor Carlotta.”

That was a pretty narrow pool, even for a place as big as Whiterun.

“So that left you and a few others. But if you recall, I needed a taglock from the cynosure, to bind their essence into the potion. Do you remember that bag of blisterwort you brought me last Loredas?” she continued.

“Yeah, I collected it while I was exploring an old barrow. I went alone and had to fight my way through an army of draugr to get out. That bag had my blood all over it." I stood and stretched. "A perfectly good taglock, even if the blood had dried by then."

“So, what will you do now?” Arcadia asked, following me to the door. 

I shrugged.

“There’s really only one thing to do. I'll see how Farengar feels about taking a trip to Winterhold to inquire about the ingredients. In the likely event that they don’t already have them, we’ll go collect them and, Azura willing, bring them back here by the 30th of Rain’s Hand. And we’ll try not to get married in the meantime, I suppose.” 

She seemed relieved by my casual tone, which was fortunate because I was on the verge of throwing up. Just going to see Farengar on a normal day was enough to make my heart race. Going to see Farengar who was newly infatuated with me to tell him that we were going on a cross country trip together made me feel like I had a hummingbird in my chest. But if Arcadia saw past my flippant remarks, she had the grace to not say anything. I hoped Farengar would be as easy to fool.


	3. Chapter 3

The doors of Dragonsreach were far too big for my liking. It was impossible to enter the place quietly, as the doors made a terrible squealing sound the whole time they were opening, only to close with a loud bang. On an intellectual level, I understood the pragmatic reasons why you wouldn’t want anyone to be able to sneak into your keep. But on an emotional level, I resented the doors as if they had personally killed my whole family. I stood outside for a few seconds, shifting my weight from foot to foot, before I finally pulled open the doors. My palms were slippery with sweat. I had absolutely no idea what to expect.

On one hand, Arcadia described Farengar as being more or less himself. It wasn’t likely that I’d enter his study to find him carving a ten foot statue of me. On the other hand, he had apparently been eager enough to see me that he had pulled himself away from his research to wait for me in a noisy, crowded bar on the off-chance I’d show up. On top of that, there was still a distinct possibility that seeing me might trigger a latent aphrodisiac effect. I reached into my pouch and ran my thumb over the cork of the sleeping draught I had brought along. I prayed I wouldn’t need it.

I peeked around the corner into his study and froze the second I saw him. I ducked back behind the wall and briefly thought about turning around and just exploring every mine, cave, and ruin I came across until I found the ingredients on my own. But unless I was willing to risk letting Farengar suffer indefinitely, there was no way to avoid this conversation. Pulling together what scraps of composure I could, I approached his desk and cleared my throat. He looked up from his book and removed his cowl.

I’d have rather died than admitted this to Lydia, but I was often wrong about a great host of things. One thing I was not wrong about, however, was my theory that removing Farengar’s facial hair would easily make him the most handsome man in the entire hold. My heart raced as I gave myself a second to take in his features. I found his long, angular face, high cheekbones, and unblemished skin all very appealing, but most of my attention fell on his dark, pretty eyelashes, and how they seemed so much more prominent now. I wanted to grip that smooth jaw in my hand and watch those pretty eyelashes flutter as I closed the distance between us.

“Ah, Sondryn, just who I was hoping to see,” he said, closing the book with an audible snap. “Has Arcadia informed you of our lamentable predicament, or will the pleasure fall to me?”

Many scenarios for how this encounter would play out had gone through my head on the walk over, but this certainly was not among them. Most of them involved an impassioned declaration of love as he knelt at my feet, or a sultry recitation of Vivec’s reflections on the belly-arts, or a stammering, endearingly nervous wizard dropping his scrolls all over the floor as he stood in slack-jawed awe of my sex appeal. But this was the same Farengar I brought a copy of _The Rise and Fall of the Blades_ to on Sundas. I noted small differences, sure -how he pulled back his hood to address me, the scarcely concealed smile on his lips, and a slightly stronger lisp- but otherwise he seemed completely normal. And even then, perhaps I only saw those things because I was looking for them.

“Wait, you already know?” was all I could manage. 

I knew how stupid it sounded as soon as the words left my mouth. Of course he knew. At this stage his memory should still be completely unmodified. 

Farengar stood and placed the book on his desk. He began walking toward his quarters and motioned for me to follow. This is not how I had expected or hoped he would try to get me into his bedroom, but I followed nonetheless.

“Naturally,” he said casually. “Did you really think I’d agree to test a potion without knowing all the particulars first? If I were the sort to let people test any old potion or spell on me without the proper precautions, I’d never have survived my years at the College.” He closed the door behind us. “I knew before I drank the potion that it was, indeed, a love potion. I also knew that you were to be my intended cynosure. What I didn’t know was that the effects would be as permanent or as potent as they are. It’s most regrettable that we must both drag ourselves away from our duties, but I suppose it can’t be helped.”

If the knowledge that we were alone in his cramped bedroom together wasn’t making him nervous, at least it was affecting me enough for both of us. It’s not that Farengar and I hadn’t been in close proximity together before, or even that it was necessarily rare. For all his talk about being ill-suited to teaching, he was often happy to station himself right behind me and offer advice over my shoulder while I used his enchanting table. To date, he hadn’t seemed to notice just how much his breath on my ear distracted me. And in spite of his withdrawn demeanor, it’s not as if he exactly recoiled from physical contact either. If it offended him when our shoulders brushed while we pored over old maps, or when I clapped him on the back after a breakthrough in our research, he never showed any indication of it. Hell, after I brought him back a rubbing of the word wall in Bleak Falls Barrow, he went so far as to hug me. 

But here, in the dim light of his bedroom, with the knowledge that he was infatuated with me, this closeness seemed more intimate by a hundredfold. The fact that I hadn’t had sex in eight months didn’t help.

“I see. So you already know why I’m here and what we need to do?” I said.

Farengar nodded, indicating the half packed knapsack lying on his nightstand.

“Yes, and I’d like to handle this as discreetly as possible. Currently only the Jarl, Arcadia, and a few trusted colleagues at the College know the exact circumstances surrounding our voyage. Everyone else has been informed that I’m assisting you on a project related to the return of the dragons. Fortunately, few others in this town have the interest or capacity to understand our research, so it’s unlikely anyone will make too many inquiries,” he answered coolly. 

I sat on the foot of his bed as he turned his back to me and gathered a a small selection of books to take with him. Not only did he seem fully cognizant of the situation, he already had a plan. Arcadia was right, same old Farengar. 

My eyes wandered around his room as he continued packing. Sparse, orderly, exactly what anyone who knew him would expect. Not that I hadn’t seen his bedroom before. He often kept his door open while he worked. However, this was the first time I’d ever really been inside. My gaze kept returning to the bed I sat on. Much too small to fit two comfortably. I bit my lip and grazed my fingertips over the comforter. 

Had he ever brought anyone back here, I wondered? When he went to the tavern on Heart’s Day, had he hoped to bring me back here? Or, unconcerned that we would be the favorite topic of town gossip for years, would he have taken me up to the loft of the Bannered Mare? Or maybe he would have asked very, very nicely to come back to Breezehome with me? I decided to get away from this topic before my mind ventured too far.

“Farengar?” I said after a while. 

He glanced over his shoulder at me.

“Hm?”

“Listen, I admit it seems like a stupid question, but before we drag ourselves halfway across the country and risk our lives to gather ingredients that are likely at the bottom of some horrible Dwemer ruin, I have to ask it. Are you certain the potion worked?” I asked. 

He stopped packing for a second.

“As you’ve said yourself many times, Arcadia is an excellent alchemist. It worked.” His tone was clipped, but not unkind. 

Unfortunately for him, I had already been the victim of dozens of pranks, jokes, grifts, scams, and misunderstandings all across Skyrim. I wasn’t going to let this go without more investigation.

“I know. And I hate to prod, but in my experience, I’d expect someone under the thrall of a love potion to be a little more...well, I don’t want to be vulgar but, uh, _insistent_ , maybe is the word? It’s just that you seem completely normal to me. This isn’t a joke, is it?” I said. 

He snorted.

“And what would I have to gain from such a falsehood, hm?” he responded, trying to jam a copy of _De Rerum Dirennis_ into his knapsack. “A vacation away from my important research in some dank, frigid cave? I have plenty of demonstrable evidence to suggest that the potion worked, I assure you.”

“Evidence? It’s a love potion, how can you have 'demonstrable evidence?'” 

At this he sighed deeply and rubbed his forehead.

“To put it crudely, I have _hard_ evidence. The aphrodisiac properties of the potion have made themselves _quite_ apparent in the past few minutes. Now, will you kindly not press the issue further?” 

I tried not to laugh. I tried with everything in me. By Azura and the mists of Moonshadow, I swear I tried. But as soon as I processed what he said, all of my nervous jitters manifested themselves in the form of waves of vigorous laughter. I laughed so hard I thought my ribs might break. I wondered if this is what it felt like to be Lydia. 

“Yes, yes. The concept of me experiencing arousal is absolutely hilarious, to be sure,” he mumbled. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I could almost feel Farengar rolling his eyes.

“I’m sorry. Really,” I said, catching my breath. “It’s...it’s not that I find the idea of you as a sexual entity amusing, I promise. It’s just..." I trailed off, the laughter gone from my voice. "Listen, finding out that my colleague took an obscure love potion and is going to be in love with me for six weeks while we travel the countryside together has had me kind of tense. I just needed a good laugh, I guess.”

It was quiet for a few seconds before Farengar took a seat next to me at the head of the bed. I politely avoided looking anywhere near his crotch.

“It’s fine,” he said softly. “As mortifying as this predicament is for me, I at least had an idea of what I was getting into. You, on the other hand, weren’t even informed. My apologies.”

I waved my hand dismissively. “I don’t mind, really. Wasting time traipsing through ruins in search of rare alchemical ingredients is what I’d be off doing anyway. Besides, I’ve been trying to get into the College of Winterhold for ages.”

“I think you misunderstand me. While I am sorry that you must take so much time away from your duties for my sake, I was mostly referring to making you the object of my desire. In hindsight, it was gravely unethical of us to conduct such an experiment without your permission. It isn’t fair that you should suddenly find yourself the focus of all of my amorous impulses.” He bowed his head. “I'm truly sorry, Sondryn.” 

My pulse was beating in my eardrums and I was very grateful that Dunmer don’t blush like Nords do. It was hard to think with the words "desire" and "amorous" bouncing around my skull.

“Ah. Well.” I coughed. “You needn't apologize for that either. You being attracted to me isn’t... _objectionable_. Besides, it’s not like you’re throwing yourself at me, ripping at my bodice like in the romance novels. If anything, you’re so nonchalant about this that it’s hard to even notice a difference.”

Farengar looked as if he was considering something for a moment, then he smirked and said, “Well, I’m very sorry to upend the illusion that the romance novels like to sell of us Nord men, but not all of us approach wooing in terms of bragging about the girth of our muscles and, what was it you said? Bodice-ripping?” 

He chuckled a little, and moved to open the door. 

I gently caught his arm and stood up. I could feel the pulse quickening in his wrist. He looked at me with an expression that would have completely passed as mild curiosity if not for the deep blush spreading over his face.

“Wait, while we’re in private, there’s one more thing we should discuss,” I said, dropping his wrist.

“Yes?” he said, in a measured tone. 

I was somewhere between envy and admiration of his poise. Here he was, under the effects of a powerful love potion, alone in the privacy of his room with -to borrow his words- the focus of all of his amorous impulses, probably close enough to smell the perfume on my neck. But he still did his best to speak to me as if we were just two peers discussing advanced enchanting techniques. It was only fair that I should try to exert the same amount of control.

I cleared my throat.

“While you’re, uh, like _this_ , regardless of what I’m feeling, or how long of a dry spell I’ve had, or how bored we get on the trip, I can’t...well-” I stammered for a bit before finding the words. “I want you to know that I won’t take advantage of you while you’re under the effects of the potion. That means that should you make any advances toward me -and I’m not saying you would, of course- I would be obligated to refuse them. The idea of forcing myself upon someone who is magically compelled to desire me is...horrifying, to say the least.”

He nodded, looking at me with an expression that was hard to place, but definitely positive. Affection, possibly?

“And they say the Dunmer have no honor. I appreciate the reassurance, Sondryn, but it isn’t necessary. One of the reasons I agreed to having you as my cynosure was because I trusted that you would never stoop so low. For my part, I’ll do my best to keep my desires to myself and maintain a respectful distance. I’m immensely grateful that you’re going through such lengths to help me, and the last thing I want to do is give you reason to regret it. I am in your debt as it is.” 

“It’s fine, really,” I said. “So, is there anything else we should or shouldn’t do to make this easier on ourselves while we travel together?” 

He shrugged.

“I don’t anticipate much trouble. Arcadia doesn’t expect that the effects of the potion should deepen too much more, at least not for a while. As for me, I’m a grown man, and a mage of the College at that. I think I should have sufficient willpower to avert my eyes when you disrobe and keep my hands to myself should we share a bed.” He paused for a second and I took the opportunity to imagine us sharing a bed in some cozy, discreet inn up north. 

“There is one request I’ll make, though even I must admit that it seems unfair. Should you find it infeasible, please, forget I even asked,” he continued. 

“Sure, what is it?”

“There is one thing that the romance novels get right about Nord men. Or perhaps it’s just a personal peculiarity, hard to say…” he began. He bit the inside of his cheek. It seemed that he was having a hard time working up the courage to make his request. 

“Farengar, I’ll do as much as I can to accommodate you, but you have to tell me what you need. If we’re going to be travelling together, I have to be able to trust that you can communicate with me, even when it’s inconvenient or awkward,” I said.

“Very well,” he said, swallowing heavily. “It’s irrational, and I’m not proud of it but I’m...perhaps a bit prone to jealousy. I’m very aware that our relationship isn’t even a romantic one, much less one of monogamous commitment. However, it seems that I’m to be enamored with you for at least another six weeks and, well, if you should decide to break your ‘dry spell,’ as it were, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to me. Or enjoy the company of others in my presence. Obviously it would be presumptuous of me to ask you to abstain completely for my sake, but if, as a courtesy, you could keep any sort of... _encounters_ you have out of my field of view, I’d be most grateful.”

His diction was politely detached, almost businesslike, but his body language told a very different story. He stared intensely at the floor, his arms folded over his chest. His lisp was noticeably thicker than usual. Even the hypothetical scenario of me fucking someone else seemed to absolutely devastate him. I placed a hand on his shoulder and looked up to meet his gaze.

“Farengar. Listen, I haven’t been with anyone in eight months and even that was a mistake. I highly doubt that someone’s going to come along to break my dry spell anytime soon, but in the unlikely event that I get the opportunity, I don’t mind passing it up. If the idea of me fucking someone else bothers you that much, I won’t. Simple as that.” I said with a shrug. 

Farengar placed his hand over mine and looked into my eyes. He was smiling softly and I thought I might die then and there. 

“You’d really do that for me, Sondryn? You’re under no obligation to stay celibate for my sake, you know that, right?” he asked. I thought his voice sounded hoarse, but it was hard to be sure. 

“Of course. What are friends for?”


	4. Chapter 4

It was snowing heavily as we left for Winterhold. Not exactly an auspicious way to start a journey. On top of that, Farengar had spent the vast majority of his life tucked away indoors, and it was painfully apparent in his horsemanship. Personally, I wasn’t convinced he had ever actually _seen_ a live horse before, much less ridden one. 

“Still back there, Farengar?” I called.

“Yes, right behind you.” His voice sounded suspiciously distant. I looked over my shoulder at him. He was not right behind me. He was at least a dozen yards back from what I would consider “right behind me.” I came to a stop to let him catch up. I was beginning to worry that there was no way we were going to brew an antidote by the 30th of Rain's Hand.

“I’m not asking this to be rude but, uh, is this your first time riding a horse?” I asked.

“The fourth, actually. Why, is it that obvious?” he said, chuckling. If he was at all embarrassed by his terrible equitation, he didn't show it.

“Will it crush your pride if I answer that honestly?”

“Probably not,” he answered, finally catching up, “I grew up in Solitude and I can count on one hand how many times I ventured outside of the walls before I left for the College. I had little opportunity for riding horses and even less desire to try. When I need to travel I generally go by carriage.”

“Fair enough.” I brought my horse to a slow trot alongside his. “You know, the Ahemmusa ashlanders had an old saying that children grow into their true selves by their tenth summer. I couldn’t really imagine you as an outdoorsy child.” 

I was absolutely delighted to be having this kind of conversation with Farengar. Usually when I initiated conversation, I tried to keep things on the topic of dragons, magic, or books. Or books about magic and dragons. While he was never outright rude to me these days, I often worried that he’d be put off if I just stomped into his study at random hours to interrupt his work with conversations about trifles like the weather. Or vegetable prices. Or my intense, burning desire to know more about him outside of our research. 

“No, definitely not,” he said. “I expect it runs in the family. My great uncle was a mage and my parents are scribes. My parents are still more or less normal Nords, mind you, and they weren’t thrilled that I choose to follow in Uncle Jonndir’s footsteps. But they understood the value of intellectual pursuits, at least, and left me to my books.” He stopped to readjust on the saddle again. “What of your family and upbringing? In spite of all the time we’ve spent together, I feel like I scarcely know anything about you, outside of our shared areas of research and hobbies.”

I ducked my head, trying to hide my giddiness. Farengar Secret-Fire wanted to know all about me and suddenly I was a ditzy 20 year old again.

“Ha, I wish there was more to tell,” I said. “Before I was the Dovahkiin, I was just some no-name alchemist from Hjaalmarch. Most of my family were shipwrights in Seyda Neen until the An-Xileel raids got too frequent to ignore. Some of my mother’s cousins already had a homestead in Hjaalmarch, so we relocated there when I was about ten. If you’re from Solitude, you might know of the area. Due north of Snowhawk, about halfway between Solitude and Morthal?”

“I’ve heard of it, but never visited myself. Carriages generally don’t do well in swamps, I’m told. But if young Sondryn was anything like her adult counterpart, I imagine a quiet homestead in the marshland suited her well.” 

“It did,” I answered nostalgically. “Young Sondryn was a bookish child who liked to wander the marshes alone, catching torchbugs. When she was around people she always butted into their business and got on everyone’s nerves.” I gave a wry smile. “I guess older Sondryn does too.”

“I don’t know about you, but personally, I’d rather entrust the fate of the world to a dragonborn who asks too many questions than one who asks too few. May I ask why you left?”

“Sure. It wasn’t anything tragic, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I shrugged. “The opposite, really. Most of my cousins started settling down and having children, and the homestead started getting a bit too crowded. Seemed a good excuse as any to start a career as a travelling alchemist, so I did. When I needed extra money, I worked with Khajiit caravans on the side, as a liaison. After the Markarth Incident, when the Stormcloaks started gaining traction, most of my family sold their property and returned to Seyda Neen. I decided to stay.” 

His brow furrowed.

“You didn’t go back? I don’t want to call your judgment into question, but why would you choose to stay in this oppressive, gods-forsaken barbaric wasteland? Why not go home?”

Although I was sure it was just obliviousness on his part, the word “home” stuck in my craw. I raised an eyebrow.

“Irony of ironies, I could ask you the same thing. A mage of your caliber could easily go to Cyrodiil and make himself the darling of the College of Whispers. But you haven’t. You’re here.” I turned to look him in the eye. “Why?” 

Nords often generalized my people as haughty know-it-alls fond of asking questions we already knew the answers to. It wasn’t an _entirely_ unfair assessment. Farengar bit the inside of his cheek, the way he always did when he was in thought.

“It might be an oppressive, gods-forsaken barbaric wasteland, but it’s my home. I presume you only asked because your answer is identical to mine?” he finally replied. 

“Exactly. I’ve lived here for seven decades, and in Morrowind for not even one. When people ask me to imagine my homeland, I picture swamps, sure, but not the swamps of of the Bitter Coast.” I stopped my horse and dismounted. Farengar tried to do the same, but instead only managed to turn his horse in a wide circle. “When I picture home, I picture Hjaalmarch.”

“I see. My apologies,” he said, his brow furrowed as he tugged on the poor mare’s reins. I walked alongside his horse.

“Here,” I said, reaching up and taking the reins from him, “yanking on the reins like that will only make things worse in the long run. The harder you pull, the more hard-mouthed she’ll get. First, sink down using your body. Right. Then pull gently, like this, to get her to stop. There you go, well done.”

I offered my hand to him. He looked unsure for a moment, but eventually slipped his palm into mine and allowed me to help him down. 

I can honestly say that I didn’t start out with any romantic intentions behind the gesture. I just wanted to help the poor bastard off his horse before he had the chance to hurt himself. But as soon as he stepped off the horse and into my arms, I saw my mistake. The intimacy of the situation overwhelmed me. The closeness of our bodies. How vividly green his eyes looked now that I was finally seeing them in the daylight. My hand cradling his waist. The warmth that radiated from him as we stood in a field of wildflowers, the snow falling softly on the plains. I wanted to kiss him more than anything.

Instead, I looked into his pretty green eyes, with their long, dark lashes, and reminded myself of my carriage ride through the Pale. All of this was a falsehood. An empty husk of what I wanted that could not sustain me. I let my hands fall to my sides and took a step back, averting my eyes. A few awkward moments passed, and neither of us knew what to say, or whether we should say anything at all.

Naturally, Farengar regained his senses first.

“So, not that I’m ungrateful, of course,” he said, massaging his legs, “but mind if I inquire as to why we’ve stopped?” 

“It’s nearly time for lunch. Besides, the horses could use a break and this is a good spot for foraging,” I answered, turning my back to him and rummaging through my saddlebags. 

I handed him the bundle of food I had packed for the journey and told him to take whatever he liked from it while I went to collect the mora tapinella I’d spotted nearby. I hadn’t shared many meals with Farengar, but he didn’t seem to be terribly picky. I was grateful for that. The last thing I needed was to lay awake at night silently agonizing over whether he preferred goat cheese or Eidar. 

I came back to find him under an outcropping of rocks, sitting on an oilcloth with two plates set out. He hadn’t touched his food yet and was engrossed in a copy of _The Rise and Fall of the Blades_. I never thought I would ever be excited at the prospect of a picnic in the snow, but this week proved full of surprises.

“You didn’t have to wait for me,” I said, sitting down across from him.

“I don’t mind.” He put away his book. “Court etiquette has a peculiar way of ingraining itself into one’s mind after a while. Even for someone as unconcerned with such empty pleasantries as myself.” He reached over to fill my tankard with mead. I wondered if he knew I preferred mead to wine or if was just a lucky guess on his part.

“I’ll just have to try to be more punctual then,” I said, tearing a strip of dried venison into bite sized pieces. I offered one to Farengar, who held up a hand and swallowed a mouthful of bread.

“Mm-no,” he said as he finished chewing. “I don’t care for meat.” 

I raised an eyebrow.

“A Nord who doesn’t eat meat?”

He raised his eyebrow back. “An elf who doesn’t drink wine?” 

So it wasn’t luck.

“Listen, it’s not like I _hate_ it. I like a warm mug of spiced wine as much as anyone else. It’s just that given the option, I'll take a sweet mead over a dry wine any day. But maybe that’s just an unrefined palate on my part, I don't know.” I set down my tankard and swallowed a chunk of dried venison. “How about you? I could see you being the type who likes to unwind with a glass of Cyrodiilic brandy.”

“I hadn’t ever given it much thought, truthfully,” he answered. “Normally I just drink whatever is convenient and won’t completely rob me of my senses. Given the option, I’d probably just drink water. Fewer hangovers that way.”

I nodded. In hindsight, that made a lot more sense than Cyrodiilic brandy. Farengar wasn’t the sort to indulge in frivolities the way I did. There was a pause in the conversation.

“So, why did you agree to test Arcadia’s potion?” I asked after a while.

“I owed her a favor,” he said flatly.

“Sure, but this seems like a pretty substantial favor,” I said, desperate for more details. 

He didn’t reply. Instead, he just kept his eyes on the half-eaten loaf of bread he was turning over in his hands.

“Sorry, it’s not any of my business," I began. "You don’t have to-”

“She befriended me,” he interjected. He started diligently picking apart the loaf of bread. “Mages are already disliked by the general populace. My unpleasant disposition only gave everyone a more solid foundation for their distaste. Fortunately, for some reason, Arcadia was willing to overlook my disagreeable personality. Every time I visited her shop, she badgered me to come have supper with her until I finally relented. We talked for hours that night. About our shared interest in alchemy at first. Then about how I was adjusting to my new post. Which was to say, poorly. Eventually, I opened up to her about how deeply I missed the College, and how I wondered if I had perhaps made a grave error in leaving it for Whiterun.” He stopped fiddling with the bread in his hands and looked up at me. “Arcadia has always treated me kindly, and when I can, I strive to repay her kindness.” 

I gave him a sympathetic hum. I knew what it meant to be scorned and distrusted by your neighbors. Open-minded people like Arcadia were hard to come by in Skyrim, and his loneliness resonated with me, in a way.

I shook the crumbs off of the oilcloth as Farengar put away the cutlery. We made light conversation as we cleaned up. I tried not to get too distracted by the idea that we could have little picnics like this every day.

After lunch, Farengar took a walk, probably to relieve himself or some of the tension in his legs. I didn’t ask. I leaned up against a tree, idly scratching my horse’s neck as I tried to calculate exactly how long it would take us to get to Winterhold at our current pace. I heard a light cough behind me and felt a gentle touch on my back. 

I turned to see Farengar, holding a bundle of lavender out to me, avoiding eye contact as if his life depended on it. In spite of the temperature, my palms immediately started getting damp with sweat. I wondered if he could hear my heart pounding from where he stood.

“You were right, this is a superb spot for foraging,” he said quickly. “There’s a remarkable amount of lavender in this area, considering the temperature and time of year. I thought perhaps a skilled alchemist such as yourself could find a use for it.” His eyes sheepishly flickered to mine. His tone was casual, but his face was so flushed I would have thought he was feverish if I hadn’t known better.

Not that I was in any place to pass judgment. He at least had enough to composure to speak. I, on the other hand, gaped at him in complete silence for a few achingly awkward seconds.

“They’re...thank you,” I choked out. “Yes, I think I could find a use for these. These are excellent specimens, Farengar. Thanks.”

I took the lavender, my fingertips lightly brushing against his knuckles. A wavering, nervous laugh escaped my throat and I grinned at him like a lovesick child. I was in deep.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: mild dubcon

It wasn't until the fifth night that we had an incident. We were camped a few hours outside of Winterhold. I had just finished dousing our fire for the night and was watching as the embers died out. An icy wind cut through the mountains and I curled in on myself, pulling my cloak tighter. How anyone could manage to live here was a mystery. I stood in the darkness for a while, waiting for the last of the smoke to die down, and gazed up at the moons. Secunda peeked out, half-concealed behind Masser. I shivered.

The past few days, we had managed to keep to our longing pretty well confined to stolen glances and double entendres. Neither of us was the type to maintain a constant stream of dialogue, but the lulls in our conversations were comfortable and warm. Aside from the unspoken -but undoubtedly shared- anxiety about our deadline, we were relaxed in each other’s company. We shared a tent agreeably, politely averted our gazes while the other washed or changed, and it seemed that I was the only one being affected by their libido. Typical. But in my defense, finding sufficient time and privacy to masturbate when traveling with a companion was hard enough on its own. But with Farengar as my companion, I was so paranoid about the possibility of getting caught that even when I did find an opportunity, I was too afraid to take it. After more than a week without any sort of release, I was starting to feel the tension. At dinner, I zoned out and apparently just stared at Farengar's hands for a solid five minutes as I imagined him fingering me right there in the snow. I felt like an absolute creep.

_'What the fuck is my problem?'_ I thought. Why was I the only one whose urges were getting the better of them? How was Farengar, enthralled by a love potion brewed by a master alchemist, doing a better job at keeping his impulses in line than I was? He had promised me he would be nothing less than a gentleman on our trip, and so far he had gone above and beyond that promise. Possibly even too far, to tell the truth. 

On the first night, he had pulled out his own tent and insisted on sleeping alone, which flew in the face of both custom and common sense. For Nords, sharing a tent, or sometimes a bedroll, with a traveling companion wasn’t just a practical measure against the harsh climate. It was a display of trust and camaraderie. To a lot of Nords, insisting on sleeping separately was nothing short of an insult. Nonetheless, Farengar insisted on sleeping in his own tent until I pointed out that while his physiology may protect _him_ from the worst of the weather, _I_ was born at the foot of an active volcano. Without someone to share my tent or a fire going, I likely wouldn’t be able to sleep for the cold. And I found out the hard way a long time ago that sleeping with a campfire going was a surefire way to let every bandit within ten miles know exactly where you were. While I might have complained about Lydia’s stubbornness once or twice in the past, at least she had never tried to freeze me to death. Coincidentally, just as I finished the thought, I felt a pelt slip over my shoulders.

“You should come inside, Sondryn. In such conditions, even Nords are susceptible to hypothermia. Long term exposure to temperatures such as these can prove positively fatal for your kind,” Farengar said from behind me. 

He was right, of course. While we weren’t much further north than my own Hjaalmarch, the high elevation made it brutally cold. I followed him inside, aware that I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore.

“You’re shivering,” he observed, as I fumbled with my armor. 

I didn’t reply, my attention focused on trying to undo the buckles of my bracers with my numb, shaking hands. Farengar silently began undoing the straps for me, diligently avoiding looking me in the face. I smirked.

“You’re blushing,” I teased. 

His serious expression shifted into a grin. “Ah. So, this is how you repay my good deed? By making light of my affliction?”

“Oh? Is undressing me an act of charity now? And here I thought you’d be grateful to have the pleasure.” I knew immediately that it was the wrong thing to say. My tone had come across as less “playful, light-hearted joshing” and more “overtly lewd flirting.”

Farengar’s hands stopped for a second and he swallowed loudly. 

“No, no, I...of course not. Or rather, of course I am,” he stammered, fumbling to undo a buckle. 

There was a short but tremendously awkward silence. I cringed.

“Listen, Farengar, that wasn’t appropriate and I’m sorry. I meant it as a joke, but it came off as, uh…” I couldn’t think of how to finish the sentence.

“Erotic?” he supplied. 

His face was a deep red now, as he shakily removed one of my bracers. For the first time during our journey, his controlled, clinical demeanor had slipped. Maybe my earlier assessment had been off, and he was just as affected as I was. That thought worried me about as much as it turned me on.

“I was going to say crass,” I replied, plucking the hardened piece of leather from his hand and turning my back to him. 

I began unbuckling my cuirass as he conjured a small flame to help me unthaw. I placed my armor on the ground beside my bedroll and he dutifully turned around as I changed into my sleep shirt and pulled on a pair of long wool stockings.

“You can turn around now,” I said, crawling into my bedroll. 

He did the same, and pulled out a book. As he read, I curled into a ball and debated whether it was worth braving the cold outside my bedroll to fish another pelt out of my bag. It was a few seconds before my violent shivering and the chattering of my teeth drew his attention.

“Are you really going to be able to sleep like that?” he asked, looking at me with earnest concern. 

For a second I considered lying and insisting that I was fine, but it was obvious to both of us that I couldn’t tolerate this level of cold.

“Honestly, no,” I answered. “Will you get me another pelt out of my bag?”

Had I been travelling with Lydia, I’d have just slid into her bedroll and warmed my toes up against her calves until she kicked me away. But trying that with Farengar, especially in light of how awkward I had just made things, seemed wildly improper. 

“Of course,” he said. He extracted himself from his bedroll and placed a cave bear pelt over me. He looked down and considered me for a second, probably taking note of how the extra pelt did absolutely nothing to stop my shivering. 

"You know, admittedly I'm no expert on wilderness survival, but I somehow suspect that this isn't going to work," he said. I did my best to not look like a pitiful, drippy-nosed Dunmer freezing her ass of in the mountains of a frozen hellscape. Apparently I failed, because Farengar removed the pelts from his bedroll, draped them over me, and carefully climbed into my giant pile of furs. It was a tight fit, and any other time, I would have been a flustered mess over how closely our bodies were pressed together, but in the moment I was much too cold to care. 

“By Julianos, your skin is like ice,” he said, vigorously rubbing his hand along my arm. “How do your people manage here?”

“We go through a lot of firewood,” I answered, curling in closer and warming my icy hands on his chest. It was a testament to either his stoicism or the strength of the potion that he didn't slap my hands away.

I was always amazed at how much heat Nords gave off. The first time I shared a bed with a Nord, I was young -barely 26- and I was certain she was running a terrible fever. I actually got up and insisted on brewing her a potion because I was positive that her brains were boiling in her skull and she'd be dead before morning. She had to call her poor brother into the room and let me feel his face before I was convinced that Nords really just ran that hot all the time. Little wonder they ate so much, honestly. 

My shivering finally stopped. Farengar rested his hand on my arm, his thumb idly tracing the curve of my bicep through my shirt. I tried to still my heavy breathing. How many times had I imagined this? My eyes traveled upward, away from his collarbone, to his face. He looked away when we made eye contact, but eventually turned his gaze back to me. He gave me a small, nervous smile. I wondered how he felt, with our bodies entwined together, our faces mere inches apart. Did it excite him like it excited me?

As if to answer, I felt a warm pressure against my hip. There was a brief moment in which we both stared blankly at each other and processed what was happening. As soon as we’d both made sense of the situation, he looked absolutely mortified, and tried to pull away. Unfortunately this bedroll was sized for one person, and was far too small to give him any space to retreat without opening it and letting the heat escape. Ultimately, he only succeeded in rubbing himself against me as he tried to readjust. He stifled a low moan that, if I had to guess, was borne more from embarrassment than arousal. 

Before I could think better of it I asked, “Hey, Farengar, is that-”

“Please,” he interjected, burying his face in his hands, “I implore you not to finish that sentence. But yes, it is.” 

We continued trying to squirm into a position in which his erection didn’t rub against me. As much as I would have liked to have viewed this situation solely from the clinical, professional lens of a learned alchemist, my clit was practically throbbing. My imagination kicked into overdrive. How would he react if I wrapped my legs around him and pressed myself against his cock? Would he lie back and meekly let me use him for my own release? Would he beg me for more stimulation? Would he tell me he loved me as he let his hands settle on my hips? I was achingly horny, but I resolved to deal with that problem later. I cleared my throat.

“Listen, it’s not a big deal,” I said, my mouth conspicuously dry. “Would you like me to, uh, give you some privacy? I’m not a mage, but I can conjure enough flames to keep myself warm while you’re...uh, otherwise occupied.” 

That was an exaggeration on my part, at best. I could maintain flames for no more than a few seconds and I was going to be freezing and miserable, but I had no intention of letting Farengar know that. 

He shook his head firmly and finally managed to roll over and turn his back to me.

“No, no, I’m sure it will pass in a few moments,” he said, his voice heavy with shame. “I...Sondryn, you have my deepest apologies. I promised you that I was absolutely in control of my desires and now I fear I’ve betrayed your trust and disgusted you. If you’d like for me to sleep separately, I completely understand. Please believe me when I say that this isn't intentional. I’m sorry.”

I rubbed his shoulder and took another deep breath to steady myself. I never was much good at keeping secrets and I couldn't see any sense in holding back now.

“Don’t be sorry, I know it's not on purpose." I hesitated, the words heavy on my tongue. "Listen, I have to be honest with you. Even though I’m very likely only making matters worse in the short term and ruining our friendship in the long term, you deserve to know the truth. Farengar, I’ve wanted you for a long time. I was intrigued by you when we first met, but when we started working together, that feeling developed into something deeper. If I’m being perfectly honest, right now I’m so turned on I can barely breathe, much less think. To say I’m not offended is, uh, is putting it _mildly._ ” I squeezed his shoulder. “I know that right now you must feel like an absolute creep, but I want you to know that's not the case. I feel the same way you do right now. So there's no reason to be ashamed, all right?”

I was sure I was very much going to regret this moment once Farengar was cured. Visits at Dragonsreach would likely be a lot more awkward now that he knew that every time we discussed the pragmatic uses for fungal pods, I was imagining sitting on his face. 

He shook his head sadly and said, “I appreciate that you want to console me, Sondryn. You’re an immensely compassionate person. But you needn’t stoop to falsehoods, I assure you that my ego will recover in time.” 

“Wait, what? You think I’m lying about this?” I gave the back of his head a look of absolute confusion. “Why would you think that?”

“You don’t strike me as a passive woman, Sondryn. Once you’ve established that your feelings are reciprocated, you move in. If you wanted me as much as you say, then wouldn’t you have taken me by now? Why torment yourself when I’m here and...so clearly willing? Why torment _me?_ ” he asked in response. 

“What?” I propped myself up on my elbow. “Farengar, this was literally one of the first things I brought up. We talked about this before we even left. Shouldn't a scholar know better than to build a theory on a false premise?”

“Beg your pardon?” 

“You say I won’t take you even though you’re willing, but you’re glossing over the fact that you're not _actually_ willing, Farengar,” I stated firmly. “You just _think_ you’re willing. We’ve both read Muiri’s letters to Arcadia. The longer this goes on, the more natural your attraction to me is going feel. You’ll gradually become convinced that you’ve always felt this way. That you were always in love with me. That this is normal. But none of that is necessarily true. It’s not just possible, but probable that the memories you have of being in love with me are either false or exaggerated.”

I paused for a second. 

“Listen, I don’t know how you felt about me before. But right now neither do you. Maybe your memory is fine and you _were_ willing before and I was just too self-conscious see it. But right now we have no way of knowing that for certain. What we do know is that the spell you’re under twists your affection and distorts your memories over time. To take you right now would mean victimizing you, and I’d never do such a monstrous thing.” I pressed my forehead to his shoulder. “Especially not to someone I care for so much.”

He was quiet for a long time.

“Ha, that sounds just like you,” he whispered. “So very ethical. I admit, I would desperately like to think that that’s why you won’t have me. But...” His voice sounded choked, hoarse. Heartbroken.

In addition to their endless appetites and their impossible body heat, another thing that had always amazed me about Nords was their stubborness, and the countless subjects they could be stubborn about. In Farengar’s case, he was holding tight to his insecurity. Which made sense, when I thought about it. He had lived as a mage in Skyrim for his entire adult life. He'd probably had it drilled into him by every drunk mercenary and judgmental barkeep he'd ever been within ten feet of that he was completely undesirable. Of course it wasn’t enough to hear that I was interested in him. He was every bit as meticulous and skeptical in his personal life as he was in his academic one. He needed proof.

Using what leverage I had, I pushed him onto his back and positioned myself on top of him, easily pinning his hands over his head. The furs fell away in a pile around my calves and I studied Farengar’s face for a moment. His eyes were red, and I wondered if he had been close to tears. He turned his head away.

I held his jaw with my free hand and tilted his face toward mine. 

“Look at me,” I commanded. 

He met my gaze reluctantly. I felt his breathing quicken beneath me and noticed him bite sharply into his lower lip. His cock throbbed against my thigh as his hands writhed in my grip. His entire body tensed, and a groan escaped his throat before he could suppress it. For a second, I worried that he might cum just from this. I pushed the jolt of arousal I felt to the back of my mind, to deal with later, and tried to convince myself I wasn’t making yet another terrible mistake.

“Listen, and listen well,” I said. “I love you. And I don’t say that as a ploy to make you feel better. I’m saying it because trying to hide it is torture and because you need to know. If you decide that you still want me after you’ve been cured, know that I’d be happy to take you at any time. But right now, I can’t.” The edge seeped out of my voice. “I just can’t, all right? I want you, but not like this.”

I had always wondered how Farengar might react to me confessing me feelings, and I had imagined hundreds of outcomes: from him gleefully jumping into my arms, to him coldly rejecting me with a sneer of disgust. Somehow, I had never imagined that he would just stare at me in skeptical silence. I rolled my eyes. Stubborn bastard.

“Oh, Azura’s sake, Farengar!” I fought back the urge to shake him. “Don’t you find it suspicious how much time I spend in your study, even when there’s nothing for me to work on? How I’m always showing up with a book you might like to borrow, or to see if you need any errands run? Can’t you feel how fast my pulse is beating in my palms? How much more evidence can you possibly need?” I stroked his jaw with my thumb and let my voice drop to a whisper. “I’m in love with you, Farengar. Or at the very least, infatuated with you. Will you please just believe me now?”

He gave a stilted nod, swallowing heavily. His body seemed to be straining under mine. 

I shook my head.

“I want to hear you say it, Farengar,” I said, releasing him.

If I had been expecting him to maintain his aloof air of detachment, I was in for a big surprise. The second I let go of his hands, they found their way to my thighs, his fingers digging in softly at the band of exposed flesh between my stockings and tunic. He moaned as he tried to stop himself from rocking his hips beneath me. I noted that both his pants and the inside of my thigh were now slippery with pre-cum. His expression betrayed as much panic and shame as it did lust. He wasn’t in control anymore and he was horrifically aware of it.

“Fuck...Sondryn, please. You love me, I can feel how much you want me, just...please. I-I can’t...I’m so sorry...” he babbled, his eyes squeezed shut. 

He shuddered as he pressed the head of his cock into my thigh. As sexy as I might have found this under any other circumstances, I was terrified at how aroused he had become. I had clearly underestimated how potent the aphrodisiac qualities of this potion could be. I had been expecting some reaction, enough to get my point across, but not this. This was much too far. He looked like he was a hair’s breadth away from cumming his pants. I quickly slid off of him, before this could go any further. He groaned, and for a second I thought he might try to pull me back. 

I felt absolutely terrible. I had very clearly crossed a line, even if Farengar hadn’t realized it yet. I turned so my back faced him. There wasn’t quite enough room in the bedroll for him to lay on his back beside me, so he curled up against me instead. His breathing still came in ragged huffs, and he tried to hold his erection down with his hands as we apologized profusely to each other. 

“Farengar?” I said after a while. Could he feel the guilt in my voice?

“Yes?”

“I know it isn’t my business, but why won’t you just masturbate? I’m concerned that staying pent up like this is unhealthy for you. If you had some sort of...release, your desires might be easier to manage.” 

I could feel him curling in on himself beside me.

“One of the, ah, side effects of the potion. I can’t climax unless…” his voice drifted off.

“Unless?” 

He inhaled shakily and answered, “As you likely already know from Arcadia’s notes, I can only climax when I think of you. However, there are perhaps certain... _complications_ to the situation.”

“What do you mean?”

He fidgeted beside me.

“I'll start from the beginning. Immediately after ingestion, I was nearly asymptomatic. I felt a rush when I thought of you, but my faculties were very much intact. I reported this to Arcadia and we had assumed that our initial expectations were confirmed: the potion was so weak as to border on useless. We agreed that she would check in on me later, in case there were any changes, and we went about our days as normal. 

“But as the hours wore on I...ah, I was overcome by my desires. Eventually, I could no longer concentrate, no longer think. I tried to ignore it and to focus on my work, but it progressed to the point that I couldn’t read a single page. I had to go to my quarters. It’s humiliating to admit, but...do you remember the dark red scarf you left in my study? The silk one you had been wearing in your hair?” 

“Yeah, I leave it on your alchemy table at least every other week,” I answered. “What about it?” 

He sighed beside me, and hid his face in his hands. Given the context, I guessed that the memory was as arousing as it was shameful for him.

“Even from where it was on my dresser, I could smell your perfume on it,” he began. “It...it felt like a violation, to use an article of your clothing in such an obscene way without your knowledge. Especially knowing that you would likely be coming to collect it soon. I tried to resist, but I failed. It was as if my body wasn’t my own. I’m so sorry.”

I couldn’t think of what I could possibly say to soothe him, so I merely took his hand in mine and tenderly ran my thumb along his knuckles.

“I-I came twice with it pressed to my face,” he admitted. “When that wasn't enough, I’m ashamed to admit I, ah, used it to pleasure myself more _directly._ I don’t have the words to describe it. My mind was completely overwhelmed. I could think of nothing except how soft the silk felt on my skin. How good it smelled. How good you would smell, if I were to bury my face in your neck while we, well...” he cut his confession short, apparently deciding it was for the best that I not hear all the lurid details. 

He was right, of course. In spite of the somber mood, I was dripping wet as I conjured a mental image of Farengar laying in bed, moaning softly as he luxuriated in my scent, his hand twisting the sheets as he desperately stroked himself with my silk handkerchief wrapped around his cock. The feeling of his hard dick against my ass wasn’t exactly helping my situation either. 

He took a few seconds to collect himself before continuing.

“In any case, I went to The Bannered Mare later that evening, hoping to find you there. Even now I’m not sure if I meant to apologize or try to bed you. Probably both, to tell the truth. Luckily, Arcadia had come to check in on me and found my office empty. She found me and convinced me to return home before I could humiliate myself.” He stopped and shifted again. 

“Since then, I’ve attempted to imagine other things. Other people. But regardless of how hard I might try to focus, my fantasies always stray back to you. After I finish, I’m reminded of how I lost control that first night.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I feel disgusted with myself. Remembering what I did, how I couldn’t stop myself...it’s nauseating. It’s simpler to just avoid it altogether. To try to forget.”

I turned to him and stroked his hair. I felt the tension ease out of his body as he lay in my arms. It would have been a heartwarmingly tender moment, had he not been leaking pre-cum onto my hip.

“I understand,” I said, pressing my forehead to his. “For what it’s worth, I’m not disgusted by what you did. You were under the influence of a powerful love potion made by one of the finest alchemists in Skyrim. You weren’t yourself, Farengar. This isn’t your fault, all right?” 

I pulled back to look at him.

“Besides,” I continued, “it isn’t as if I’m in any place to judge. What I did just now was absolutely repugnant and I can't blame it on a potion. I never should have restrained you like that, and getting on top of you should have never even entered my mind. There are boundaries that I can’t expect you to enforce in your current state, and I crossed one. I’m the one who should be sorry.” 

“For what? Having me pinned and at the mercy of a beautiful woman?” he asked. “I know what my proclivities are, and I’m inclined to believe I would have enjoyed being under you, even without the potion." He gave me a joyless smile. "But even if I could know that for certain, it seems unlikely I could ever convince you.”

The rest of the night passed in silence. If nothing else, at least we had our guilt in common.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: mild dubcon
> 
> there's also discussion of huge age differences because, y'know, elves.

The awkwardness had barely dissipated by the morning. Both of us had tried to apologize for the night before, but neither of us was gifted with enough social grace to actually make the situation any better. Instead, we stumbled over our words, each trying to take the blame, as we prepared our horses. The lulls in our conversation were less comfortable.

Fortunately, it was only a few hours of strained silence before we saw Winterhold on the horizon. The city was just as desolate as I had remembered, the sky grey and miserable over the dilapidated town. Even without taking the the Nords’ distrust of mages into account, it was hard to believe that anyone actually lived here of their volition.

“Did you know that I was born the same day the Great Collapse began? It’s odd to think that this town was falling into the sea as my mother swaddled me for the first time,” I commented as I stabled our horses. Admittedly, it wasn't the best icebreaker, but I was desperate to break the awkward silence that had hung over us all morning.

“Interesting.” He considered me for a moment. “I suppose it puts into perspective just how long-lived your people are compared to mine. My great uncle Jonndir was a student at the college during the Great Collapse, and he used to tell me stories of it when I was a child. He died of old age nearly a decade ago. You’re only sixteen years younger than he was, but still so lovely and virile.”

I jostled his shoulder to lighten the mood.

“Yes, well, when I’m thinking about how much I want to fuck you, I do my best to forget the fact that I was pushing 50 when you were learning how to hold a spoon. Although, I think ‘lovely and virile’ may just be the potion talking.”

Farengar chuckled. He looked a little flustered, but pleasantly so. It was progress.

“Oh, are you not young and beautiful by the standards of Dunmer?” he asked. 

I finished unloading my bags from my horse, and heaved Farengar’s bag of books over my shoulder before he could insist on carrying it himself.

“Well, my grandmother was 207 when she died, so in the very unlikely event that being dragonborn neither extends nor shortens my lifespan, I’m...well, not quite middle aged, but not exactly a youth either. Trying to relate the ages of mer to men is tricky, but in Nord years I’d say I’m...35 probably?” I answered.

“Ah, still older than I am by any yardstick, it seems. Although I suppose I shouldn’t complain, I'll outpace you soon enough.” He smiled slyly. “You still haven’t addressed the second part of my question, by the way.”

I wasn’t sure if his question was meant to be flirtatious or if he was curious about Dunmeri beauty standards. Probably both, if I had to guess. I thought for a while before answering. 

Among Nords, whatever appeal I might have had was often cancelled out by my foreignness. Or by being a dark elf, specifically. Too familiar to be exotic, but still too alien to be the girl next door. The Nords who did show interest in me were too often the kind who believed that all Dunmer had a mystical knowledge of “the secret and ancient belly-arts.” And while, admittedly, I did know a few special bedroom techniques from Vivec’s manuals, they were a far cry from being orphic sex magicks of a bygone age. Usually the Dunmer-chasers left disappointed to discover that having sex with me was like having sex with any other person, and not a living god. 

So I turned my thoughts to Seyda Neen, how people there had congratulated my parents on having such a lovely child. I mentally sifted through the compliments that family and friends and strange Dunmer in bars had paid me since I reached adulthood.

“Am I beautiful by the standards of Dunmer?” I echoed. “Well, with the obvious caveat that attractiveness is subjective and varies wildly between individuals, I guess my answer is yeah, probably. Much like Nords, my people tend to like athletic builds and strong features, so I'm considered handsome in those regards at least. Being a Thane and Dragonborn work in my favor as well. Power and social standing factor into desirability just as much as build and bone structure.” I paused for a moment. 

“Uh, what else is there?” I continued. “I guess my skin tone is thought of as traditionally beautiful? Which is probably because Barenziah had blue toned skin, but there are some superstitious types who claim bluish skin is a sign of favor from Mephala. On the other hand, while they aren’t ‘ugly’ per se, my black hair and light eyes aren’t considered particularly striking or elegant. Overall, I think most other Dunmer see me as pretty, but not a remarkable beauty like Irileth.” 

Farengar stopped walking and turned to me, his eyebrows raised.

“Irileth is a _'remarkable beauty?'_ ” 

“Yeah, how have you not noticed? Were you not interested in Dunmer women before the potion? Irileth is an absolute paragon of Dunmeri femininity. Strong, dutiful, poised, striking, politically powerful, red headed...if my family knew I was associating with someone like that, they’d have my skin for not courting her,” I said with a laugh. 

“I suppose I just never thought of her in that light,” he said. “As well as I can recall, I’ve always found elves attractive. Dunmer are certainly no exception. And while I may not be as exclusive in my inclination toward women as Lydia is, many of the people who have drawn my interest in the past have been women. It’s not that I thought of Irileth as unattractive, more that I’ve never considered her in any capacity outside of the platonic or professional.”

We stopped outside the entryway to the college. The same Altmer woman who had politely denied me entry on my last visit greeted us.

“Farengar, so wonderful to see you again.” She inclined her head toward him, regally. “And you as well, Thane Hleran. The letter explaining your circumstances arrived two days ago. While we regretfully don't have the components on hand, you’ll be pleased to hear that Urag has already begun compiling research materials for you.” She stepped aside, gesturing for us to enter. “You should find him waiting for you in the Arcanaeum.”

Farengar's bags hit the snow with a soft thud as he rushed forward. He squeezed her shoulders and smiled up at her warmly.

“Faralda, please, there’s no need for such formality here,” he said softly, pulling her into an embrace, “Divines, how I’ve missed you.”

She grinned widely, her eyes squeezed shut as they held each other. Had I not been so shocked, it might have occurred to me to feel jealous. Instead I just stood there quietly and tried to process what I was seeing.

“Ah, Farengar, I didn’t want to embarrass you in front of your friend,” she said, placing a hand on his cheek. Her gaze was tender, full of affection. “You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you. Corresponding is nice, but it hardly compares to seeing you in person. I have to keep watch until five, but perhaps I’ll see you at dinner? We can catch up then.”

A feeling of dread was building in my chest as I helped collect Farengar’s bags. I was puzzled. From what I had read, he shouldn’t be able to have romantic feelings for anyone other than me while under the effects of the Draught of Devotion. Was he just keeping up appearances for the sake of his lover? Or was I completely misreading the situation? A feeling of anxiety gnawed at me as I considered the idea that this potion might destroy a love that had blossomed in Farengar’s school years. 

“Careful. The walkway tends to ice over in the winter,” he said, skipping over missing stone. If it had been anyone else, I would have said their tone was downright chipper, but I found myself having a hard time applying the word to Farengar.

“Thanks. Listen, I don’t mean to pry, but do you mind I ask you something personal?” I ventured. 

“Yes, but only if I may ask you something in return.”

“Yeah, of course,” I said. “So, I was wondering...not that it’s any of my business, but did, uh, are you and Faralda…" I made a vague gesture with my free hand. "You know?"

Farengar laughed. Not just chuckled, but laughed. He doubled over, holding on to the railing for support.

“No, no,” he said, collecting himself. “Absolutely not. But you’re not the first to have come to that conclusion. It’s true that she and I are very close. Between us, I’ll even confess that I had an embarrassingly schoolboyish infatuation with her when I was young. But our relationship has never been romantic, at least on her side.”

“I see. Good." I cleared my throat. "I was worried that I might be, uh, _complicating_ something.”

“Not at all,” he answered. “Faralda has long been a friend and mentor to me. Like my great-uncle Jonndir, I also came here to study in my teens. As unpleasant as I am as an adult, I assure you that as a youth I was infinitely more insufferable. Luckily, Faralda saw potential in the bitter child moping in the Arcanaeum. She personally trained me in the School of Destruction. She tried to instruct me in social graces as well, but, well, there’s only so much one can teach in seven years.” 

With that, I relaxed a little, and looked out over the Sea of Ghosts for a second before turning back to Farengar.

“She sounds like a good teacher,” I said. “Was there something you wanted to ask me?”

He faltered for a moment, and bit the inside of his cheek, possibly trying to be very precise with his diction or maybe wondering if he should ask at all.

“Why haven’t you courted Irileth, if you don’t mind my asking?” he finally asked. “By your own description, she’s the perfect partner.”

I ran my tongue over my teeth as I thought about it.

“So don't laugh, but I always wanted to marry for love. Like my parents did. And at the end of the day, I’m just not in love with Irileth,” I answered with a shrug. “It’s true that she made my heart race when I first met her. Irileth’s easily the most handsome woman I’ve ever met, after all. But after the initial attraction wore off...well, it’s not that I dislike her, by any means. I respect and admire her, but I just can’t picture us in a relationship together. There’s just no chemistry, you know?” 

I reached into Farengar’s hood and ruffled his hair as I continued, “Besides, there’s this unpleasant, totally insufferable Nord at Dragonsreach that I have my eye on instead. I figured if I was going to fall for the wrong person and disappoint my parents, I may as well go all in.” 

He laughed again, and lazily swatted my arm away.

“Ah, so that’s what this is all about. Planning to rebel against your parents by marrying a Nord, I see.” 

It was almost surreal to see Farengar like this. Was this what he was like, when he truly felt at home? I imagined him in Breezehome, wearing the same warm, relaxed grin as he woke up next to me, joking with me as we prepared breakfast together. It was unbelievably corny, but I found myself stifling a sigh nonetheless.

“No, actually. I’m sorry to report that my parents would absolutely adore you,” I said. “And by their standards, a Nord court mage in good standing with the College might even be a more desirable match for me than the Jarl’s housecarl." I sighed dramatically. "Sadly, I’m afraid my feelings for you are sincere, and that I like you for your personality.” 

Farengar turned to me, incredulous.

“For _my_ personality?” 

“What can I say?” I said, as I opened the door to the Arcanaeum for him. “The Dunmer are a peculiar people.”

The first thing that struck me about the Arcanaeum was how cozy it was. A tall, stone structure at this elevation and latitude should have been absolutely freezing, but I was so warm that I considered taking off my cloak. I shot a questioning look at Farengar.

“A very clever bit of spellwork, wouldn’t you agree?” He gestured to a sigil carved into the door frame. “In actuality, it’s well below room temperature in here. Apparently, Drevis grew tired of everyone arguing about how cool or hot the buildings should be kept, so he crafted an illusion that causes anyone inside to perceive it as being their ideal temperature. Argonians describe it as nearly tropical while I find it to be comfortably cool and dry.”

“Wow. How much for him to do our tent?”

Aside from the temperature and the wells of blue light, the library seemed otherwise ordinary. There were no floating astrolabes, or sculptures of pure aetherium. By far the most surprising thing about it was the librarian. 

As much as I liked to imagine myself an enlightened individual capable of seeing past the prejudices that bogged down lesser minds, the truth is that I was caught off guard when I realized that the librarian of Skyrim’s magical college was an Orsimer. Fortunately, he was too engrossed in his book to notice my surprise. Or he was so accustomed to it that he ignored it out of habit.

Farengar propped his elbows on the librarian’s desk and nodded toward him.

“Sondryn, this is Urag gro-Shub, the oldest artifact we have at the College.” 

Urag merely turned the page of his book, not bothering to dignify the jab with a reaction.

“Farengar. I have to admit that of all your peers, I never thought you would get yourself into this predicament,” Urag said. 

Farengar smirked.

“Because of my meticulous nature and careful attention to testing protocols, or because you thought no one would ever want to use a love potion on me?”

“Both. Leaning towards the latter.” Urag paused, put down his book, and smiled for a fraction of a second. “Good to have you back. Won’t go so far as to say I missed having you skulking around my library at all hours, but this is agreeable enough. Reminds me of old times.”

“Ah, you mean back when you still had all of your hair?” Farengar’s smirk had turned into a full-blown grin. He looked younger, more alive than I remembered. It felt like the entire time I had known him at Dragonsreach, he had been wearing a mask and it had never occurred to me to question whether he might have a face underneath it.

Urag snorted and eased himself up from his chair. “Brat.”

He motioned for us to follow him, and gestured at a table overflowing with what looked to be old transcripts, receipts, and inventory logs.

“I haven’t had a chance to sort through all of it,” he began. “But if there’s any record of the whereabouts of the ingredients you need, it’ll be in here. Scrib jelly is going to be hard to come by, but Draven says he remembers some kid from Morrowind who tried her hand at raising kwama in Skyrim about 50 years ago. Tried altering some of the eggs to make the things more resistant to cold. Disappeared before she could publish her findings, but I was able to find her research proposal and a few correspondences. Might be outdated, but it’s your best shot of finding the stuff outside of a trip to Solstheim.”

Farengar nodded and clasped Urag’s arm, looking him in the eye as he said, “Thank you, my friend. All joking aside, I’m very grateful that you would go through so much effort for me on top of your other duties. I owe you.” 

Urag snorted again.

“Don’t be stupid. Dredging up old documents for mages who got in over their heads is my job. Has been since before you whelps were born. You don’t owe me anything. Just do me a favor and keep your hands to yourselves while you’re in my library. Friend or not, if you get any fluids on my books there’ll be a blood price to pay.” He turned his gaze to me. “You got that, elf?” 

I nodded. If I wasn’t going to fuck Farengar in the privacy of our tent while his dick was pressed against my ass, I _certainly_ wasn’t going to fuck him in the middle of library within earshot of a cantankerous Orc mage.

We sat down and immediately began poring over the documents, making notes of what might be our most promising leads. To our benefit, Drelasa Thelas was a meticulous note taker right up until she went missing. Not only did she make note of which abandoned fort she would be conducting her research in, she gave exact directions to its location. Eirma’s Keep was about five days away on horseback, assuming we went around Windhelm. Which we absolutely were.

Sadly, although the College had known exactly where her experiment was taking place, the mages who had gone to investigate her disappearance found the fort too overrun with kwama to venture into. They postulated that her experiment had worked too well, that the population soon became too numerous to control, and that she had been killed by the very kwama she had raised. My heart broke for her, as I read over her journals. In her native tongue of Vélothi, she detailed every triumph and setback, and she mourned the state of her homeland.

So much of Morrowind had died. Not just people, but our land. Our flora. Our fauna. Our identity. Devastated and rendered to ash. The way my grandmother told it, the alit were the first creatures to go extinct. Or at least the first we noticed when the smoke cleared. Only through a great collective effort did silt striders avoid the same fate. The lava of Vvardenfell seared into the minds of all Dunmer just how precariously we were all situated. I ran my hand over Drelasa’s last journal entry, over a passage that read,

_“Even if all of Morrowind should fall into the sea or be consumed by fire tomorrow. Even if war and disaster should claim every last Dunmer. In this rundown, abandoned fort in Eastmarch, there still lives a colony of kwama. A remnant that endured both fire and ice and grew to thrive in the darkness of a cold, foreign land. A humble legacy, but a legacy nonetheless.”_

I hadn’t realized I was crying until Farengar started wiping at my tears with his sleeve. 

“Shhh. Don’t cry. Here, perhaps it would be best if we took a break, hm?” he said quietly, running his thumb over my cheek. “They’ll still be serving dinner in the Hall of Countenance and there are still a lot of people I have yet to show you off to. Do you think you’re up for a warm meal?” He stood and offered me his hand. His voice was calm and reassuring, but his brow was furrowed in concern. I was glad he hadn't asked for details or for an explanation, because I wasn't sure if I had it in me to articulate my feelings. I simply nodded, and let him lead me out of the library.

===

Only after a long, lively dinner with Farengar’s friends, did we return to the Arcanaeum. This time to find more information on the sacred lotus seeds. Even though dinner had been a cheerful distraction, my emotions were still running high. As I read through research proposals, experiment outlines, and notes of former students, I felt a sense of injustice gradually overtaking me. They were working with resources I could have only dreamed of in my youth, books older than the city itself, ingredients I had never even heard of except in legends, brand new methods developed by the greatest minds Skyrim had to offer. And I couldn’t access any of it because I didn’t know how to summon a flame atronach.

Then the knot of emotions in my stomach twisted as I thought back to dinner. I wasn’t often given to bouts of insecurity, but my mind kept returning to how so much of the conversation had gone over my head. How everyone’s in-jokes and inferences flew right past me. It’s not that anyone had even been trying to exclude me intentionally, I just didn’t belong. Maybe being a backwoods apothecary wasn’t enough. Maybe no great injustice was being done, and I wasn’t a mage of the College because I wasn’t worthy of being a mage of the College. I was inadequate.

“This looks promising,” Farengar said, interrupting my bitter thoughts. He leaned in and tapped his finger on one of the papers he was holding. 

I scanned over the section he was pointing to. A caravan carrying a shipment of various sundries from Cyrodiil, including sacred lotus seeds, had been waylaid by Forsworn raiders about a year ago. His eyes were wide as he glanced up at me. I smiled. We were onto something here. 

“How shelf stable are sacred lotus seeds?” he asked.

“Very. In the right conditions, they can last for decades.” I leaned in closer, hooking my arm around the back of his chair, and re-read the passage carefully. “They aren’t rare because they’re hard to store or transport. They’re mostly hard to come by because banditry and the Thalmor’s punitive trade measures have made it difficult to import them. It’s usually easier to just substitute in native components like river betties than to go through the logistical nightmare of getting lotus plants into Skyrim.”

“Interesting. So, shall we consider this a possibility, then?”

“More than a possibility,” I replied. “The Forsworn are adept alchemists, but my understanding is that they generally don’t experiment much with non-local components. I doubt they would have used much of it for their potions, if any. If they were smart, they would’ve kept most of it back to sell. The longer the rebellion stretches on, the more treacherous the trade routes get, and the more valuable the seeds become.” 

He grinned at me.

“So we have it, then? We know where we’re going from here?” He kept his voice low, even though Urag had long since left, but it was rapid with excitement. 

I nodded, pulling a map from under a stack of papers. I traced my finger along our proposed route.

“We’ll go to Eirma’s Keep for the scrib jelly first. Then we’ll return to Whiterun to check in with Arcadia and deliver the jelly. From there we’ll head west, stop in Rorikstead, and see if anyone has heard of any Reachmen selling imports from Cyrodiil. We might need to go to Markarth for more information, but Azura willing, we could have the components back to Arcadia in less than three weeks.”

For a second, it seemed like he was going to hug me, like he had when I brought him back the transcription from Bleak Falls Barrow. But evidently he decided against it, and instead he sheepishly looked away, his hands in his lap. I squeezed his shoulder. 

“Well done,” I said. 

With that small bit of encouragement, he relaxed into my side a little. I wasn’t tall enough for him to rest his head on my shoulder comfortably, so instead he settled for resting his cheek on the crown of my head. He made a noise that was as much a laugh as it was a sigh of relief.

“I can hardly believe it,” he said.

“I know.”

“Perhaps it’s merely my inclination toward cynicism, but I expected that it would take us days to find just one viable lead. But we’ve unearthed two strong prospects in merely a half day. We might actually do this.”

“You should have more faith in your librarian.”

The Arcanaeum was cozily silent as we sat and basked in the relief of our accomplishment. If I lived a hundred eras, I don’t think I’d ever forget the feeling of Farengar’s cheek against my hair, and the welcome warmth of his body. I closed my eyes and let the tension seep out of my muscles.

“Sondryn?” he asked, after a while.

“Hm?”

“I, ah, had noticed that you smell different today.” 

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. I had hoped that my new perfume would go unacknowledged. “After, uh, last night, I figured the Jazbay perfume might makes things uncomfortable for you. Bring up things that you’d rather forget. So I switched it out for something new.” 

“You needn’t have inconvenienced yourself on my behalf, but...well, thank you,” he said softly.

He toyed with a lock of my hair for a few seconds before he brought to his face and inhaled, deep and slow. I never in my life imagined that I would get aroused by a man smelling my hair, but when Farengar did it, my body felt like it was coursing with electricity. I was glad I had opted to keep my cloak on. I didn’t want him to see how I got goosebumps when he exhaled, quiet and shaky.

“I...ah, it’s nice. May I ask what it is?” he asked.

“Uh, just something I blended a while ago. Part lavender, part tundra cotton, some juniper, and some _extremely_ diluted Telvanni bug musk.”

He nuzzled further into my hair. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel the heat radiating from him and knew he was flushed. My pulse pounded in my ears.

“Mm, I didn’t know you were a perfumer as well,” he murmured.

I took a quick glance at his lap before I could stop myself. I saw exactly what I expected to and hastily averted my eyes.

I was not generally the sort of person who obsessed over things like penis size. I didn’t particularly care if my partners even had dicks in the first place, much less whether they had big ones. But the sexual tension was getting to me. Or maybe Farengar was just proving to be the exception to everything I thought I knew about myself. Between last night and the glance I’d just taken at the bulge in his robes, I had enough information to make an educated guess as to his dimensions. He wasn’t freakishly large, but he was large enough that I wouldn’t want to take him without plenty of preparation. 

For a moment, I let myself fantasize about tying him down and teasing him while I took my sweet time stretching myself, until he begged me to take him. I felt myself getting wet as I imagined his wrists straining against the ropes as I ground slow circles into his hips. I cleared my throat and straightened in my seat a little. This was something to think about later.

“Ha. Well, I don’t think anyone would go so far as to call me a perfumer. I’ve picked up enough to make a profit, but fragrances aren’t my specialty. If not for Angeline I don’t even think-” I stopped when I felt his lips brush my ear. 

His breath was hot on my skin as his tongue traced its way from the lobe of my ear to the tip. One of his hands was lighty skimming his own thigh and the other tenderly cupped my jaw.

“My mistress, my _muthsera,_ please,” he whispered. His voice was breathy, desperate.

A jolt rang through my body, almost as much desire as it was alarm. For a second, I worried that he had somehow read my thoughts and knew all about my filthiest fantasies of him. How I wanted him bound and on his knees, begging to please me. But this wasn’t how I wanted to win his submission. This was a corruption of even my most perverted desires, a mutual violation. 

I pulled back and looked at him, horrified. His eyes had a disquieting hunger in them as he moved to close the distance between us again. His hand crept up the outside of my thigh, to rest on my hip. This wasn’t Farengar.

I panicked.

“Stop! Farengar, what are you doing?" I shouted. "Stop! _Fus Ro!_ ”

The thu'um was unnecessary and I regretted it as soon as the words left my mouth. His chair tipped over and he tumbled to the ground as I stumbled back. I watched him carefully, steadying myself against the desk.

The impact seemed to bring him back to his senses immediately. If I thought the look of panic and shame he wore yesterday was heart-rending, this was worse by a hundredfold. He stayed on his hands and knees, trembling slightly, with his eyes on the ground. I took a step closer to him and offered him my hand.

“I am so sorry. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“Stop. Please."He held up his hand to halt me. "Don’t come any closer. I’m not injured.”

I held up my hands and took a step back.

“Farengar, listen, it’s all right...” I started, trying to affect a calmness that I absolutely wasn’t feeling.

He shook his head violently.

“No, it isn’t! That was wrong. Beyond wrong, that was...what I just did was reprehensible.” He slumped against the leg of the table, and looked at me imploringly. His eyes were red and puffy as he held back his tears. “Please don’t...don’t do whatever _this_ is. Where I do something horrible and you try to make an excuse for me and act as if everything is fine. It’s not fine. Please, just...just know that I’m sorry, Sondryn. I’m so sorry.” 

My own eyes were burning with tears as well. I sat on the floor beside him, not quite close enough to touch. I wanted more than anything to reach out to him, to hold him and tell him that he wasn’t to blame, that he was as much a victim as I was. But I knew that touching him would only make matters worse. So instead I buried my head in my knees and sobbed until my throat felt raw. We sat there for a long time, crying together at arm’s length.

Slowly, I reached out and gently pulled at his sleeve. He took a shaky breath and looked to me, his face blotchy and wet with tears.

“Farengar, this is getting worse.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: discussions of non-consensual somnophilia and dubcon

Farengar had insisted that we should leave as soon as we woke up, but I convinced him to stay at the College for a few hours while I went into town for supplies. My hope was that some time away from me and an opportunity to talk to Faralda in private might improve his mood. At the very least, I knew I wanted some time to myself.

My thoughts were troubled the entire walk into town. There was no discernible reason why Farengar’s impulse control should be declining so quickly. Arcadia and Muiri believed that the aphrodisiac properties of the potion could wax and wane based on the position of the stars and moons, but my star charts indicated that he shouldn’t be affected for another three weeks. I was tempted to write it off as a defect in the potion itself, but I knew Arcadia. She was much too meticulous with her work to have made any unrecorded substitutions or mismeasurements. Especially with a close friend like Farengar as her test subject. There was nothing wrong with the potion on a technical level, I could be certain of that. If the abnormality wasn’t in the potion or in the stars, then logically it had to be in our behavior. 

I racked my brain for anything we could be doing out of the ordinary that could cause such a rapid deterioration. The physical stress of going from the sheltered environment of Dragonsreach to five continuous days in harsh weather conditions might have been my first guess, but last night’s episode occurred in the comfort of the library. Physical contact had been my next theory, but there were plenty of times that we had touched without incident. Touching might exacerbate the problem, but it wasn’t the cause. Along the same lines, it seemed possible that time of day could be significant, as both incidents had occurred in the night, but it still didn’t explain why these episodes were happening in the first place. 

“Continuous proximity, maybe?” I mouthed to myself as I opened the door to Birna’s Oddments. The store was just as rundown and shoddy as I remembered. Maybe even a little more than I remembered. Birna, however, managed to look like a goddess among the dusty shelves and deteriorating wood. If there was one reason why someone might choose to live in this miserable rat’s nest of a town, it was her. She looked up from the ledger she had been frowning at and almost looked surprised to see someone coming through the door.

“Welcome to Birna’s Oddments, where we buy and sell-” She cut herself off as a spark of recognition hit her. “Hey, I remember you! You’re the alchemist who bought that old claw off me. How’d it go?”

“Ah, well, you were probably right not to go in that old barrow,” I answered, trying to make the appropriate amount of eye contact. “It just about had a draugr for every Septim in it. Lucky thing I had Lydia with me.” 

Birna seemed to slump a little. “Oh. That dark haired woman who was with you last time?” 

“Yeah. My housecarl. Good woman, even better fighter.” I wasn’t sure why, exactly, I was so keen on clarifying that I wasn’t seeing Lydia. Surely I didn’t actually think that something would happen here, if I let Birna know I was single.

“Ah, so she’s your housecarl, then.” She tilted her head toward me, smiling. “I had no idea you were such a big deal, Miss Alchemist.”

I couldn’t help it. I giggled. While being Dragonborn might have made me more accustomed to flattery, I was by no means immune to it.

“You can call me Sondryn. And I’m not a big deal, just ask Lydia.” I dragged my eyes away from Birna’s lips and to the weathered shelves behind her. “Uh, could I get two wheels of Eidar cheese, a sack of flour, and some tomatoes? And that copy of Mystery of Talara?”

She turned and reached over a humble shrine to Zenithar for the book. Well, “shrine” was a generous description. In actuality, it was just an amulet with a few coins and snowberries scattered around it. About a foot away from it was an equally humble monument to Dibella. I idly stared at the gem in the center of the bronze lily. 

Then something clicked. _The lily._ My mind began to race as all of the pieces came together. We had all underestimated the complexity of the Draught of Devotion.

“-Is that all right?” Birna asked, looking at me expectantly over her shoulder.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“I said we don’t have any tomatoes. Are carrots all right?”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s fine,” I said, still looking at the makeshift shrine of Dibella.

She followed my gaze and a sheepish smile formed on her face. She turned and laid out my goods on the counter, her eyes occasionally flickering up to mine. For a second, my gaze faltered towards her bodice and I immediately recognized that as a mistake. Desperate for a place to look that wasn’t her eyes, lips, or cleavage, I set my eyes back to the shrine.

“I guess your people don’t really worship Dibella, do they?” It was pretty clear that she was trying to disguise the eagerness in her tone as curiosity. Just my luck that after eight months of involuntary abstinence, the most beautiful woman in Winterhold would make a move on me now.

“Ha, not really,” I answered, shaking my head. I could feel my pulse in my throat. My eyes caught on Birna’s long, dainty fingers and my body was quick to remind me that I hadn’t had an orgasm in a _very_ long time. 

“I could tell you all about her, you know, if you wanted” she offered, timidly brushing her fingertips over the back of my hand as she handed me the book. “Maybe over dinner?”

I would very much like to say that I immediately rebuffed her advances. That I didn’t for a moment even consider breaking my promise to Farengar. That I _definitely_ didn’t imagine lifting her onto the counter and making her cum so hard the rafters shook. But the sad truth was that I was a weak, lustful woman with a taste for bashful Nords with nice hands, apparently. I had a white-knuckle grip on the leather cover of the book as my eyes traced over her body from across the counter. I wanted her. _Bad._

I swallowed heavily as I withdrew my hand.

“Um, listen, I appreciate the offer,” I began, cramming the book into my knapsack, “I really do. And please don’t misunderstand, it isn't you. A month ago I would have jumped at the chance. But circumstances have changed and I-”

“Hey, it’s fine, you don’t have to explain anything to me,” she said, holding up a hand to stop me and smiling ruefully. Then, with a roll of her shoulder she added, “Can’t blame a girl for trying though, right?”

“Right,” I answered, handing her a few Septims. At least she took it gracefully.

I turned to go, but a thought stopped me in the doorway. “Hey, not to pry, but I don’t suppose bookish, dark-haired Dunmer women are your type, are they?”

“Why? You have a cute sister waiting outside?” Her tone was sarcastic, but the intrigued expression on her face made it abundantly clear that, yes, bookish, dark-haired Dunmer women were exactly her type.

“Not quite,” I said, as I walked out the door. I resolved to put off playing matchmaker until after I was done filling in Farengar on my new theory.

I practically ran all the way back to the College. Partially to work out the tension, but mostly because I wanted to share my thoughts with Farengar immediately. I yanked open the door to the Hall of Countenance and began rushing towards Faralda’s quarters. From across the hall, I could see her sitting on the bed beside Farengar, gently rubbing his shoulder and resting her cheek on his head while he stared miserably at the wall. They apparently hadn’t noticed me yet. I slowed down and cleared my throat as I approached the doorway.

“Sorry to interrupt, but I think I’ve got it figured it out,” I declared. 

Farengar and Faralda looked at me, then at each other, both vaguely confused.

“It’s a failsafe,” I explained, pulling out my notebook and stepping inside. “When I was going over the components with Arcadia, I was driving myself crazy trying to figure out the purpose of the lily from the shrine of Dibella. Eventually, I just assumed it was just meant to act as a run-of-the mill aphrodisiac, or that maybe it served some sort of symbolic purpose, and I moved on. But I was wrong. It’s more than that.”

They moved to either side of me to read over my shoulders. I pointed to the list of components.

“It’s kind of brilliant, really,” I continued. “Usually, with love potions like these, it’s easy to accidentally give it to the wrong person. It’s the downside of not requiring a taglock for the imbiber. Say, for example, you baked a potion into an apple pie and gave it to the cute tanner down the road. With a normal love potion if, say, his grandpa ate it, you’d be stuck with an unwanted admirer until it wore off, or until you gave him an antidote. But the Draught of Devotion is different. It has a built in failsafe.”

“The aphrodisiac remains latent in the imbiber, unless the cynosure is aroused by them,” Faralda concluded.

“Exactly. The attraction has to be mutual for it to work,” I said.

“So then,” Farengar reasoned, “in all likelihood, the intensity of the aphrodisiac is directly tied to your arousal as well. We’re both attracted to each other, but because we won’t, ah, _act_ on that attraction, we've unintentionally created a feedback loop, of sorts.”

I nodded. “Under normal circumstances, the cynosure would either not be attracted to the imbiber, leaving the aphrodisiac latent, or-”

“Or, the cynosure and imbiber would have acted on their desires by now, thus preventing the build-up of tension we’ve inadvertently created,” Farengar finished for me.

“I see.” Faralda cleared her throat. “As intriguing as I find this on an intellectual level, I must say that I’m not exactly eager to know more about my dear protégé’s sex life. I hope you two don’t mind if I excuse myself from this discussion.”

Farengar turned slightly red and nodded as Faralda patted each of us on the shoulder and left the room.

“So, what do you propose we do?” he asked, as soon as she was out of earshot.

“Masturbate?”

“Absolutely not,” he said, turning toward the wall. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Stubborn bastard.

“Listen, I know it makes you uncomfortable, and I wish I had a better answer for you,” I said, “but by trying to ignore our desires, we’ve made everything ten times worse. The longer you go without release, the more easily aroused you are. And the more aroused _you_ are, the more aroused _I_ am. The tension between us is just going to keep escalating.”

He didn’t say anything but crossed his arms and continued shaking his head. Nord hardheadedness at its most frustrating.

“Farengar, you’ve had two episodes in as many days. How many more will it take? How much worse does it have to get? We need some kind of outlet for this tension. _You_ need some sort of outlet.” 

“I can’t.”

“I understand how difficult it is for you, but this is becoming dangerous and it’s not just _your_ neck on the line,” I insisted. “Say I have a wet dream about you and trigger the aphrodisiac in my sleep. You might not be a threat to me when I’m awake, Farengar, but Dragonborn or not, I’m just as defenseless as anyone else in my sleep.” 

He didn’t respond, but he stopped shaking his head and stared at the ground.

“Farengar,” I stepped forward and lowered my voice. “Think of what you could do to me. Last night you licked my ear and ran your hand up my thigh before I stopped you. How far do you think you would have gone if, for some reason, I hadn’t been _able_ to stop you?”

He turned to face me and I couldn’t decide if he looked more hurt or horrified. “Sondryn, please, I would never...I’m not...”

“I know.” I hesitated for a moment before I placed my hand on his shoulder. “The Farengar I know is a good man. Disciplined. Trustworthy. A perfect gentleman.” I drew a long, shaky breath and looked into his eyes. “But right now, you aren’t always the Farengar I know. Sometimes, you’re something else. And it isn’t your fault. The potion doesn’t care about our morals, or what we want, just the physical process of arousal.”

Farengar nodded, but stepped back. I lowered my hand as a vastly dense silence settled between us.

“There’s another way,” he finally said.

“By all means,” I motioned for him to continue.

“No more contact,” he said heavily. “No more helping me off my horse. No more sharing a tent. No more buckling your bracers for you in the morning. If we limit the number of situations in which you find yourself aroused by me, we can limit the number of episodes.”

I thought about it for a second. For someone like Farengar, losing control of himself like this must be nothing short of traumatic. I understood why he didn’t want to masturbate, and even if I didn’t think this was necessarily the best way to deal with his feelings, the last thing I wanted to do was coerce him into something he didn’t want to do. I closed my eyes and exhaled.

“Deal. I’ll stop by Birna’s and get myself some extra pelts on our way out of town. I had to go back there anyway.”

“Good.”

The room was quiet again.

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“Please, I’d really rather not discuss-” Farengar started. 

I interrupted him, “It’s not about last night. Or rather, it’s not _just_ about last night, I guess.” I sighed and ran my hand through my hair. “I can’t help but feel that this is my fault. If I didn’t...if I weren’t such a fucking pervert, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“And if Arcadia and I hadn’t made you the cynosure of a love potion without your knowledge or consent we wouldn’t be in this mess either.” He shrugged. “Assigning blame is a waste of time, Sondryn. Agonizing over whose fault this is won’t get us any closer to the antidote.”

“Yeah.” I nodded, running my tongue over my teeth. “Yeah, you’re right. As usual. Thanks, Farengar.”

I turned and headed toward the doorway.

“Are we leaving?” he asked. 

“Almost. I just have to track down Brelyna and then I’ll be ready to go.”

He gave me an inquisitive look. “Brelyna? I didn’t know you were acquainted with her.” 

“I’m not,” I answered, smiling to myself. “But I think I know someone who’d like to be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter's finished! And only a month late!


End file.
